To be completely honest, I'm not too sure on how to approach this so... here goes:
Barbara Kingsolver, author ofThe Poisonwood Bible, explores the concept of humility with the experiences of the fictional Price family in Congo and their perspectives on events in Congolese history that occur within the duration of their thirty-year missionary trip. Kingsolver’s approach to this concept is multi-tiered and separates into three levels with increasingly wide breadth: humility within the Price family, the humility of the Price family as they interact with members of their village, and, the most macroscopic view of the three, how foreign powers such as the United States and Belgium treat nations with the potential to develop like the Congo. Kingsolver approaches the topic of humility on different levels to show her audience what, despite their difference in size, unifies the three levels: a discrepancy in understanding that distorts the level of humility expressed between two parties.
Humility
Price Family
"My father, of course, was bringing the Word of God--which fortunately weighs nothing at all." (19)
"Father wouldn't have held my hand for the world-he isn't like that." (181)
"What conceit! I was his instrument, his animal. Nothing more." (89)
"when we get back home, I vow I shall give all my very best books to the underprivileged, once I have read them." (147)
Price Family and Villagers
"We are supposed to be calling the shots here, but it doesn't look to me like we're in charge of a thing, not even our own selves." (22)
"Nathan felt it had been a mistake to bend his will, in any way, to Africa." (97)
"I didn't see there was any need for them to be so African about it." (45)
Congo and its Oppressors
"The United States has now become the husband of Zaire's economy, and not a very nice one. Exploitative and condescending, in the name of steering her clear of the moral decline inevitable to her nature." (456)
'Your King Baudouin is living off the fat of this land, is what he's doing and leaving it up to penniless mission doctors and selfless men like my husband to take care of their every simple need. Is that how a father rules?" (166)
"We Belgians made slaves of them and cut off their hands in the rubber plantations. Now you Americans have them for a slave wage in the mines and let them cut off their own hands. And you, my friend, are stuck with the job of trying to make amens." (121)
"I do not like to contradict, but in seventy-five years the only roads the Belgians ever built are the ones they use to haul out diamonds and rubber. Between you and me, Reverend, I do not think the people here are looking for your kind of salvation." (122)
"Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom." (201)
"You believe we are mwana, your children, who knew nothing until you came here." (333)
Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Poisonwood Bible, explores the concept of humility with the experiences of the fictional Price family in Congo and their perspectives on events in Congolese history that occur within the duration of their thirty-year missionary trip. Kingsolver’s approach to this concept is multi-tiered and separates into three levels with increasingly wide breadth: humility within the Price family, the humility of the Price family as they interact with members of their village, and, the most macroscopic view of the three, how foreign powers such as the United States and Belgium treat nations with the potential to develop like the Congo. Kingsolver approaches the topic of humility on different levels to show her audience what, despite their difference in size, unifies the three levels: a discrepancy in understanding that distorts the level of humility expressed between two parties.